Opinion: When Share Plates At Restaurants Aren’t Done Well, There’s A Lot To Loathe

Johanna Thornton has reached a tipping point with the share plate phenomenon – and she wants to know who’s with her.

I was at a popular Ponsonby “fusion” restaurant when a familiar dance played out between the well-meaning waiter and me.

It was an innocent inquiry not long after I’d sat down, and one I’d heard many times before. “Have you dined here before?”

“No,” I bristled, knowing what was coming next. “Then I’ll just explain how the menu works,” says the waiter.

Before I can interject, they have launched into a spoken word essay on the art of sharing, delivering it with the ease of someone who has explained this concept 500 times before, to diners who might – bafflingly – still need it explained.

“The menu is split into smaller and larger plates and everything is designed to…” “Share?” I offered. “Yes,” continued the waiter, “and it comes out in the order that it’s ready.”

I get it. I really, really get it. There is no need to explain the shared plate phenomenon to diners in Auckland, because it is not a phenomenon, it is now the norm. It’s like warning Wellingtonians about the wind. I sometimes feel like share plates are less of a dining trend and more of a Truman Show-style social experiment designed to test my limits.

This recent experience tipped me over the edge.

Scanning the menu, I paled at a typically innocent-looking scene. Dishes were grouped into vague sections including “snacks”, “fresh”, “fried” and “barbecue”, but with prices ranging from $14 to over $50.

The waiter, having noticed the distress on my face, gave the two of us some advice: “I’d recommend a good amount of food is two snacks, three or four small plates, two large plates and a side.”

“And if it’s not enough you can always order more.” Nobody has ever ordered more.

I’m a writer, not an accountant but suggesting someone orders nine dishes totalling over $200+ sounds like a pretty promising business model. Are shared plates just a clever way for restaurants to charge more? Because I can bet I’m not the only one who caves to peer pressure when told that anything less than nine dishes is skimping.

A typical internal monologue: ‘That sounds like a lot of food. If I only get three plates, is that a bad look? I can’t order the $42 short rib without greenery; I guess that $18 broccolini sounds reasonable. Those snacks do sound bloody good, it’d be a shame not to try at least two. And they’re only $12. For a mouthful. I wanted a cocktail too – when was payday again?’

It’s a lot of head noise for a Friday night dinner. I came here for a meal, not an episode of The Price Is Right.

Just as we can thank Ferran Adrià for the countless experimental imitations that tried, and failed, to replicate the magical dishes of World Number One restaurant El Bulli, in New Zealand we can credit Al Brown with introducing the now ubiquitous share plates. (Of course, well before Depot opened in 2011, New Zealand’s earliest Chinese restaurants were arguably the first to introduce diners to big communal plates, but for the purposes of this rant, let’s focus on the zeitgeist of the mid-2000s.)

As the well-told story goes, he opened his at-the-time groundbreaking restaurant right in time for the Rugby World Cup crowds where the tables were all rough-hewn wood, the surroundings were all exposed concrete and the wine was served in tumblers. And the food? It was very, very good. Head chef Kyle Street served his intrinsically New Zealand, often charcoal-fired, seafood-heavy menu with loud, buzzy music, and had it delivered by knowledgeable waitstaff on plates designed to share. We loved it. We loved it so much that it quickly spread across the city.

Street went on to open his own shared-plate restaurant Culprit, taking the concept to the next level with a yum cha-style trolley of small dishes. He’s ditched the trolley now, and has funnelled his best dishes into a tasting menu – that’s mostly to share. Places like Baduzzi, the Blue Breeze Inn and Odettes followed, with menus designed to share and offering respite – at long last – from the stuffiness of fine dining. In the past year or so there have been more brilliant restaurants: Metita, Gilt, Osteria Uno, Tempero, San Ray... In fact, name a new opening in the past two years that doesn’t offer share plates and I’ll personally fund their ‘mains-only’ menu.

While shared plates reflect the way people want to dine right now – which is in unfussy, communal, relaxed environments where the conversation flows just as the plates are passed across the table, when they’re not done as well as they are at Depot, there’s a lot to loathe.

Let’s start with that old chestnut of “everything comes out when it’s ready”. I can’t count the number of times the smaller side dishes have come out way in advance of the shared mains, which means by the time your skirt steak arrives, the potato gratin and greens you ordered are long gone, leaving you with a giant paddle of meat. Why subject yourself to that when you can order the steak frites and have the best of all three perfectly proportioned on one plate and singing in harmony?

And that’s another thing – plating. At top restaurants, chefs view it as an art form, balancing flavours so each bite is a perfect composition. Shared plates throw that out the window. Instead of a curated dish, you’re left with a random heap, assembling forkfuls with no regard for the chef’s original intent.

More than just the flavours, it is the presentation that is tarnished. By the time the burnt aubergine and labneh makes its way down to your end of the table, it’s been decimated by your dining companions, and is now just a smear of sauce and some shredded skin. That would never happen at The Engine Room, where they serve their eggplant on one plate with falafel, lentils, tahini and harissa, designed for you to eat at your leisure and with flavours thoughtfully chosen for you.

The number of times I’ve found myself eating off the same tiny side plate as share plate after share plate arrives, the sauce from each consecutive dish piling up on the edges like a millefeuille. Is it too much to ask for a fresh plate? And why is this side plate so small?

While I’m not necessarily up for an entree, main and dessert every time I go out for dinner, this idea of a well-timed dining experience soothes me. There’s some pleasing theatre behind the idea of a beginning, a middle and an end. By comparison, the shared plate dining experience is a bunch of small plates crowding out a table all at once, which sometimes feels like a free-for-all as dinner guests vie to hoe into the best dish before you do. It’s uncivilised.

And what about the polite dance that happens around the best morsels of food? (“No, you have it, honestly, I’ll just sit here and sip my water while watching you enjoy it, like a Dickensian orphan staring through a bakery window”). Or the inner turmoil that builds within as you try not to demolish all three sage and goat’s cheese ravioli; instead filling the gap with the blander, capsicum-heavy pappardelle your mate ordered.

Let’s also spare a thought for the slow eater, the people who like to talk at dinner, those with smaller appetites, people on a first date and anyone with dietary restrictions. The slow eater will be forced to look on in horror as the shared plates disappear before their eyes, swiftly preyed upon by their fast-eating dining companions. So too will the verbose friend, who while regaling the table with their latest office story will have the deep-fried snapper eaten from under them. The small eater will be footed with the giant bill even though they hardly ate, because this is a shared meal and they’re expected to share the costs. The first daters will spend the whole evening offering each other the last bite. And your lactose-intolerant pal will politely eat only two of the six shared dishes because nobody else was willing to forego burrata and parmesan.

Before you come for me saying hospitality is already struggling enough without this huffy rant dissing its share plates, this is merely meant as a conversation starter. Convince me that share plates are a blessing, not a scam. But do it quickly, before the last dumpling disappears.

Do you agree with me on share plates being out of control, or is this the only way you like to eat now? Is the rise of snack plates a dream, or would you like to have a whole entree to yourselves from time to time? Let us know. Send your feedback to viva@nzherald.co.nz and we’ll compile it as rebuttal or add it to the case against share plates.

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